What Dawn Demands

by Clara Coulson

  What fate portends indeed, I thought.

  Then Manannán tossed the sword. As soon as it left his grasp, he dredged an enormous amount of energy from his soul. Magic enveloped his entire body in a tight, rippling aura that coiled around his limbs and covered his chest and neck like pieces of armor. He couldn’t attack me until my body made contact with the sword, signaling the change of ownership, until the exact instant when the contractual transaction was complete and the weight of the bargain was lifted from his shoulders.

  And it was in this space of time, as the falling sword gracefully arced toward me, the space between breaths, the space between blinks, the space between life and death itself, at least on my side of the playing field, that I finally unleashed the terrible reality of my vengeance against the god who’d betrayed me.

  I let out a high-pitched whistle, spurred by a burst of magic. The sound carried all the way across the island, rebounded off the apple trees, shrieked through the tall stalks of grass, galloped over the castle’s walls and penetrated their every crack, and finally, almost a mile away, beat against the eardrums of the two people who were waiting for my signal on the edge of the dock where this ruse had first begun.

  I caught Fragarach and activated my shield bracelet, which produced the strongest shield I had ever conjured in my life. A semitransparent blue shell that was six inches thick and blocked out all the sounds in the world. At the same time, Manannán swept his right hand forward and opened his mouth to unleash a spell that would cut through my shield like butter and strike me down body and soul.

  Unfortunately for Manannán, he never got the chance to cast that spell. Because, on the other side of the island, a witch cast a very different spell.

  And a millisecond later, Manannán mac Lir’s beloved castle exploded.

  Chapter Six

  Two Weeks after the Zombie Invasion

  The little house on Applebaum Lane had survived the zombie invasion with minimal damage. There were a number of scorch marks in the front yard, most of them vaguely human shaped, where zombies had fallen to the deadly ward array carved into the wooden beams of the front porch. One of the two matching trees on either side of that porch had lost a few large branches, from what I guessed was a zombie or two trying to climb high enough to jump through the attic window. And lastly, the aging screens of the porch had been dealt a few new holes, but someone had already bent the screening back into place to obscure the extent of the damage.

  Beyond those superficial issues, the home of Odette Chao was in perfect working order.

  I strolled up the walkway made of circular stones and lightly hopped up the porch steps, aware the wards humming beneath my feet were on the hunt for any sign I might mean harm to the home’s inhabitants. There was no lock on the porch’s door, and it swung open without resistance—unless you counted the loud screech of unoiled hinges. So I assumed that meant I was allowed to knock on the front door without getting my ass zapped by a lightning ward, or set on fire, or blasted all the way across the street. Even so, I hesitantly poked the glass storm door a couple times before knocking. Just in case.

  This was Odette we were talking about.

  After the fifth knock, footsteps padded across the foyer, and a moment later, the inner door opened to reveal someone who was not Odette Chao. The young woman was a hairsbreadth over five feet tall, with a petite though lean-muscled frame to match. She had a blond pixie cut with a hot-pink stripe curving around the right side, and both her ears were decorated with multiple piercings. Her large eyes were a pale shade of green, and they observed me first in surprise, second in fear, and third in vague recognition. (She pegged me as a terrifying sídhe before realizing I was Vincent Whelan the stretch scavenger, who she must’ve known was one of Odette’s friends.)

  Despite the realization I wasn’t going to harm her, it took her a second to find her voice. “Uh, hi. Can I help you?”

  “Morning. I’m looking for Odette.” I threw on my most disarming smile.

  The woman worried her lip. “She’s still asleep. She got in late last night. Stayed out to help quell that gas fire on Mulligan.”

  That news had already made the rounds this morning. While they were clearing some rubble out of a mostly intact apartment building, a volunteer cleanup crew had accidentally uncovered a pocket of highly concentrated gas from a ruptured kitchen line. A stray spark from who knew where ignited the gas, catching the entire building on fire in seconds. Two of the volunteers died, and ten more suffered serious burns. A team of firefighters spent three hours dousing the blaze.

  Huh. I didn’t know Odette was there. Then again…

  “Is she the reason the fire didn’t spread to other buildings?” I’d thought magic must’ve been involved when I heard no adjoining buildings suffered damage despite the total loss of the apartment complex, but I hadn’t caught any details about a practitioner.

  The woman nodded. “One of the firefighters, an old friend of hers, called her for help. She sapped a lot of her energy holding the fire back while they hosed it, so she was pretty bushed when she got in last night.” She nervously tugged on a dangling crystal earring. “Not to sound rude, Mr. Whelan, but can you come back later? I would really prefer not to wake her up.”

  “She’s already up,” said a groggy voice from somewhere inside the house. “Woke up to the loud-ass shriek of that stupid porch door. Swear to god I’m going to rip that thing out and throw it into a dumpster one of these days.”

  The inner door swung open all the way, revealing none other than Odette. She was wearing nothing but a sports bra and an unbuttoned pair of ratty jeans. Her long dark hair was a bird’s nest that hung over her shoulders in tangled clumps. Her arms were dotted with small bruises, and there was a shallow cut on her chin, already scabbed over. Injuries she’d acquired at the fire scene last night.

  Odette eyed me with disdain and grumbled, “The hell do you want, Whelan?”

  I adjusted the heavy backpack I had slung across one shoulder. “I’m planning a short jaunt across the veil, and I was wondering if you’d like to come with me. You know, kick some ass, take some names, that sort of thing.”

  Odette frowned. “The list include fighting droves of svartálfar and redcaps?”

  “It does not. There’s only one bad guy this time, and I’m not going for the jugular.”

  She examined my overstuffed backpack with suspicion. “What are you going for?”

  “Reparations.”

  Understanding flickered across her face, and she rubbed her cheek as she considered. “What kind of payoff are you looking at?”

  “If it pans out even half as well as I’d like, we might just score enough to drive our new friends with fangs back out into the wasteland where they belong.”

  Odette closed her eyes for a long moment, then blew air threw her teeth. “All right. I’ll hear you out. But if I think your plan is shit, it’s going to be a resounding no from me. I’ve taken too many beatings in the name of your poorly thought-out ‘missions’ lately, and I don’t heal as fast as you.”

  She unlocked the storm door with her prosthetic metal arm, which I noticed was faintly glowing as a result of the highly compressed environmental energy Odette had stored inside. She wasn’t quite proficient at using the conduit yet—it was an ancient weapon once wielded by a Tuatha king, and its design was as intricate as you’d expect from such an object—but I knew she was practicing with it as often as possible. Odette was a talented combat witch, and the arm was a perfect addition to her arsenal. She’d never let such an advantage go to waste. One day, she’d master its capabilities and become all the more fearsome for her efforts.

  At a nod from Odette, the blond woman retreated from the foyer, and Odette opened the storm door to usher me inside. The interior of the house was small but cozy and clean kept. In the living room off to the left of the foyer, a wood fire burned in a traditional fireplace, fighting off the creeping cold from this week’s bout of deep winter weather. The mismatch
ed assortment of aging furniture, strewn with warm blankets and books with creased spines, spoke of a type of domesticity I wouldn’t have thought to attribute to Odette. Though admittedly I had known her for less than two months, and in that time, she had never fully removed her gruff brawler mask in my presence.

  Perhaps Odette was a slightly more amenable person behind closed doors. She certainly wouldn’t be the only one who practiced that kind of duplicity. A lot of people had developed tough public personas in the wake of the purge, largely because you had to be tough to survive in the immediate post-collapse world. Some people, of course, had eventually become the masks they wore. But I was sure many more took the opportunity to remove their masks at the end of the day, in the safety of their homes, obscured by blinds, where no one could witness their vulnerabilities.

  The clinking of glass drew my attention to the right, and I did a double take at the sight of the narrow kitchen. Not because it was dirty or because its cabinets were bare, but because it looked less like a kitchen and more like a science lab transplanted from a school. The long island in the middle of the table was covered in test tubes, beakers, and Bunsen burners. And the countertops surrounding the island were piled high with an assortment of supplies, some as mundane as baking soda, some as obscure as roots from plants I was fairly certain didn’t grow on Earth.

  Several of the test tubes and beakers contained liquids of varying colors and viscosities, and as I stared on in astonishment, the blonde, positioned near the sink, crushed some kind of seeds with a mortar and pestle then emptied the contents into a tube of turquoise liquid suspended over the hot flame of a burner. Next, she snapped her fingers, and wisps of pink magic energy, the same hue as her hair stripe, wafted from her fingers and sank into the tube. The liquid in the tube turned purple, and the aroma of almonds and something citrusy filled the air.

  Odette noticed my bafflement as she shut the front door behind me and locked it tight. “Tori’s a potions master.”

  “And also your girlfriend?”

  She shot me a sharp look but didn’t bother to deny their relationship status. “And also a chemistry teacher. Though she’s out of a job right now, since the high school where she teaches got torn up pretty bad by the zombies. Won’t be back in session for at least six weeks while they work on repairs.”

  “And schools were fast-tracked on the reconstruction list,” I replied as I watched Tori work with immense interest. Potions had never been my forte. They blew up in my face more often than not. “What’s she working on?”

  “Nothing special.” Odette stretched, her right arm cracking at the joints, her left arm creaking slightly. “She’s taken on a few side jobs to make some cash while school is out. Sleeping potions. Mild stimulants. Stress relievers. Stuff the mundane pharmacies are always running short on.”

  “I’m sure the shelves are practically bare after everything that went down two weeks back.”

  “You know it.” She shook her head. “People up at night thinking zombies are going to break down their doors. Emergency personnel overworked and sleep deprived because there’s too much damage and too few people to handle it all. The recently displaced having panic attacks every time they smell smoke, worried the fires have restarted and will destroy what housing remains. And so on and so forth. Whole city needs more tender love and care than anyone can provide. But the healers and potions masters and other practitioners with relevant skills…they do what they can.”

  “As bad as the current state of Kinsale is,” I said, “it’s nice to see people helping each other and coming together to speed up the recovery in the wake of a major disaster. Wasn’t like that last time.”

  “Yeah. I remember.” Odette prodded my backpack with her metal knuckles. “But the past is the past, and it’s beyond our influence. The future’s what we have to worry about. So why don’t you tell me what you’re scheming this time around the bend, so I can decide whether my future will involve a relaxing weekend with a good book, or a risky trip to the Otherworld to engage in some harebrained revenge plot?”

  “I’m sorry. Did you just call my plan ‘harebrained’?”

  “Would you have preferred I call it ‘fucking stupid’?”

  I pouted. “You’re really mean, you know that?”

  “I lost an arm for you. As far as I’m concerned, that gives me the right to rag on you as much as I damn well please. So suck it up, you whiny twat.”

  There wasn’t a good comeback for that, so I just gestured for Odette to lead me to a place where we could have a discussion. She spun on her heels and shambled into the living room, dropping onto the couch situated in front of the picture window. I took the adjacent reclining chair and sat my backpack on the coffee table between us. And as I unzipped it and started removing its contents, I explained to Odette what I had uncovered about Manannán and that Tim Tildrum had given me the green light to seek vengeance against the sea god even though he was technically in Mab’s employ.

  When I finished, Odette gawked at me in disbelief. “So, the gist of all this is that the creepy cat guy is allowing you to get back at Manannán for luring us into that trap in Hel because it’ll make his favor-dependent allegiance to Abarta look more authentic than it would if you didn’t try to seek retribution against him for the backstabbing. The rationale being that the Unseelie are big fans of vengeance, and an Unseelie half-sídhe electing not to seek vengeance after an obvious betrayal would sort of make it seem like someone higher up the chain didn’t want that vengeance to be brought. An implication that Abarta is far too smart to miss.”

  “You hit the nail on the head,” I said.

  Odette leaned back against the couch. “That’s screwed up.”

  “It involves a millennia-old rivalry between the fae and an angry trickster god. Were you really expecting something straightforward?”

  “Good point.” She dipped her chin to indicate the plethora of items I’d laid out on the table. “All right. You’ve got me intrigued. What’s your battle plan for assailing the sea god’s island, and what are you looking to gain from doing so?”

  I plucked a bronze medallion off the coffee table and tossed it to her.

  She scrutinized it for a few seconds. “A portal talisman?”

  “Not just any portal talisman. I bummed that off Tildrum. That thing can bypass practically any barrier undetected. It’s powered by the same spells Tildrum uses to breach wards.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “No way you got it free. What it’d cost you?”

  “There’s an item in Manannán’s vault that Tildrum wants. We need to retrieve it while we’re there.”

  She ignored the fact I’d already included her as part of “we” and replied, “So not only do we have to trespass on the god’s island, we also have to break into his heavily protected vault?”

  “Well, firstly, breaking into the vault is the entire point of this venture.” I grabbed one of several identical plastic toolboxes I’d lined up on the table and popped the clasp, but I elected not to open it quite yet. “And secondly, entering the vault will actually be the easiest step of them all. Because when we arrive on scene, all the primary wards are going to be disabled. And I’m betting the door is going to be wide open too, since it’s pretty useless on its own when pitted against anyone with magic.”

  Odette scrunched her nose in confusion. “How can you possibly know that?”

  I grinned. “Tildrum has eyes on Emhain Abhlach around the clock. Sometime in the next couple weeks, per a contractual agreement between Manannán and Abarta, the latter is going to return a certain sword he borrowed to extract certain information from a certain someone. And once that sword is back in Manannán’s hands…”

  She perked up. “He’s got to put it back in his vault, which is probably so heavily warded that it takes a considerable amount of time for him to deactivate the wards to get into the vault. So if we show up immediately after he finishes deactivating the wards, he won’t be able to restore the vault’s defenses
fast enough to stop us from breaching it.” She fingered a tangled lock of hair, contemplative. “But even with the vault’s defenses down, we’ll still have to contend with Manannán himself. And he’s just as powerful as Abarta, isn’t he? How are we going to one-up him?”

  “You leave that to me, the tricky faerie man.” I pointed at the medallion in her hand and snapped my fingers, eliciting a spark of magic energy that jumped from my fingertips and struck the curved metallic edge. The medallion split in half, becoming two thinner medallions. One was the actual portal talisman, the other a beacon for its twin. “Your job, and the job of your partner, whom I have yet to select, will be to lie in wait here on Earth until I lure Manannán away from the vault, at which point you two will portal directly into the vault itself. One of you will then have a field day with its many priceless and powerful contents, while the other works on a very different task.”

  I opened the toolbox and turned it so Odette could glimpse the contents.

  She nearly dropped the medallions as she got a load of the magic-enhanced dynamite. Her gaze drifted to the other nine toolboxes. “Whelan,” she muttered, “just what the hell are you planning to do?”

  “Well, first I’m going to steal every precious thing Manannán mac Lir has labored to collect for the past three thousand years.” I slammed the top of the toolbox shut. “And then I’m going to blow up his house.”

  Chapter Seven

  Three Weeks after the Zombie Invasion

  The shockwave hit my shield like a speeding train, followed by a wall of fire. I’d designed the shield spell to be unmovable, but the blast was so powerful that the dome of energy shifted forward several inches and bumped into my back. Through it, I felt the echoes of the hot flames that engulfed the entire island, so bright in my sight that I had to screw my eyes shut to protect my corneas. But in the brief moment before my lids pressed tightly together, I caught a glimpse of a humanoid figure hurtling over the sea at a stunning speed, already nothing more than a dark smudge arcing toward the horizon. Manannán. Caught totally unaware by the explosion.